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Supreme Court of India 2019-09-05 dismissed

Laxminath vs State of Chhattisgarh

Bench: 2 — Deepak Gupta

In Brief

In this 2011 criminal appeal against a murder conviction, the Supreme Court upheld the accused's life sentence for the killing of his son with an axe. Though the key witnesses were not direct eyewitnesses to the attack itself, they credibly testified to seeing the accused enter the room armed with an axe and emerge with it, while the victim lay dead from axe wounds. The Court found this circumstantial chain of events—supported by medical evidence confirming axe injuries—established guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Minor inconsistencies in witness statements and the failure to conduct forensic testing of the weapon did not undermine the conviction.

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Criminal Law Evidence Murder Witness Testimony Circumstantial Evidence Criminal Procedure

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